Oh, I hear you! (Pun intended.) There can definitely be a tradeoff between convenience and quality. In fact, right now I don't have any really good speakers at

Oh, I hear you! (Pun intended.) There can definitely be a tradeoff between convenience and quality. In fact, right now I don't have any really good speakers at home. If I want good sound quality I have to use my Yuin earbuds or maybe the old Sony E888's if I can find them. Totally off topic, but since the earbuds came to mind I have a great hack for them. One problem with earbuds like the Yuins with a symmetric cord is that it's hard to tell the right from the left without looking closely. So I bought two of those bags of foamy covers that they have on Amazon for like $3-4 for a hundred of them - one bag of white covers and one of black. I put a black foamy on the left earbud and a white one on the right. Now I never get them mixed up! Back to Echo, I think my disappointment with the sound quality had a bit to do with how they marketed it, claiming excellent sound and showing the cutaway drawings of how they achieved that, or claimed to. And then the actual sound wasn't nearly as good as what I'd expected from the marketing. A case of over-promising and under-delivering.